Due to the tremendous number of viewing and listening options available to audiences today, audiences have become accustomed to channel surfing. One form of channel surfing is when a television viewer or radio listener switches between multiple television channels or radio frequencies, numerous times, over one viewing or listening period. Audiences may channel surf for a number of reasons. For example, at a given moment, a viewer/listener may not like a particular person on a program segment or the viewer/listener may not like a particular subject being discussed. Another common reason to switch television channels or radio frequencies is to skip unwanted segments, such as advertisements (i.e., commercials). Regardless of an audience member's reasons for switching away from a channel or frequency, the audience member may still have an interest in returning to the channel or frequency after the reasons for switching has passed. This behavior is consistent with an interest to skip unwanted program segments.
Conventional techniques attempt to assist audiences with skipping unwanted segments. One primitive tool is the picture-in-picture option of modern televisions. This allows an audience to monitor, simultaneously, multiple television channels at one time. By monitoring multiple channels, an audience member may switch back and forth between multiple channels in accordance with visual cues. For instance, if the commercial break for a viewer's favorite show has ended, the viewer may switch channels to view his/her favorite show. In practice, however, the picture-in-picture option is distracting because the viewer must constantly monitor and visually determine when to switch channels. Further, picture-in-picture does not work for audio-based programming (e.g., radio transmissions).
Other proposed solutions for assisting audiences in skipping unwanted program segments involve embedding digital signals into the television and/or radio broadcast. For example, the digital signals may be used to denote the start, end, and duration of a broadcasted program. Further, some embedded signals mark the beginning and end of commercial segments, which gives an audience member the ability to skip advertisements. However, embedded digital signals suffer practical disadvantages. First, they require modification of the originally broadcasted signal. Second, an additional device is required at the receiving end of the broadcast to interpret the embedded digital signals. Finally, the audience cannot skip program segments with a more precise level of granularity, beyond the digitally pre-marked segments. In other words, the audience cannot flexibly pinpoint when a segment of interest begins and ends without constantly switching back and forth between multiple television channels and/or radio frequencies.